


Learning to Trust Charlie

by florahart



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Hermione's self-image isn't great, Injured Charlie, OCs all over the place - Freeform, Written Pre-Deathly Hallows, but she's still the brightest witch of her age, competent Hermione, past Hermione/Roger Davies, where there's a Charlie there are dragons of course
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-01
Updated: 2006-08-01
Packaged: 2018-08-22 17:35:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8294242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: This was written for an exchange in 2006 under a different pseudonym.  Notice that this means it was written a year pre-DH, which means not only EWE, but DHWDH.  Needless to say, this means it is AU in several ways.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for an exchange in 2006 under a different pseudonym. Notice that this means it was written a year pre-DH, which means not only EWE, but DHWDH. Needless to say, this means it is AU in several ways.

Hermione stared at the drops of condensation sliding slick down the outside of her glass, following one as it joined the growing ring-puddle forming on the tabletop. The clock chimed the hour, and she looked up, startled. Ten o'clock? Had she really been sitting that long? She thought back, and couldn’t work out how it had been more than twenty minutes, but regardless, the clock--and the complete change of clientele--said it had. And, come to think of it, the way the condensation had all but stopped as the ice melted and warmed probably further supported the notion.

She wasn't disoriented. It wasn't that she'd experienced a memory modification. It was just.

It was unbelievable.

And maddening.

And humiliating.

She pushed back her chair and stood, leaving the glass in its ring as she marched away without looking back. If Roger objected to her focus and intelligence, then damn it, she was better off without him. She pretended it didn't hurt that he'd been so ready to break off a relationship of over a year and ignored the twinge that said perhaps, just _perhaps_ he had a point about her tendency to put work first, and pushed her way through the door, not even stopping long enough to do more than murmur a _sorry_ at whoever it was she knocked aside as she brushed past.

She didn't need a boyfriend anyway. She had all the men she needed in her life already, though these days Harry included Draco and Ron was generally absorbed in considering one of two things: Hannah's tits, and when might be his next opportunity to touch them.

Yes, not having a boyfriend was going to be _fine._ She headed up to the corner and Apparated home.

~*~

Blatt and DeFreese were on duty with her this month, according to the roster, and Hermione sighed. Blatt had come from the Auror training program to join the team, and DeFreese was on leave from law enforcement, and both of them were far too tied to rules and procedures--not that there wasn't a place for rules, of course, but neither of them seemed to know that the point was the maintenance of order, not the letters that made the laws, and on the whole, they both drove her entirely around the twist.

It didn't help that Roger's position doing clerical work for the Wizengamot--he called it paralegal work, and told her he'd be on the court himself one day, but she wasn't entirely sure that was a valid perception on his part--meant he had liaised with both of them frequently, and therefore they both had ideas about her that weren't especially fair.

But then, neither of them listened, either, and besides, they gossiped too much to get anything done anyway. If anything untoward happened, she figured she was probably on her own despite that her role in the unit should have been one of logistics, leadership, and creative spellwork.

As far as she could tell, based on the various circumstances surrounding her, her early assessment that men were useless had been dead on target.

~*~

Ice cream as a remedy was vastly overrated. For one thing, the market had been completely out of the chocolate caramel peanut she wanted, so this chocolate biscuit crumble concoction--which had roughly the texture of concrete--was inherently bound to be less than optimal, but even a 25% increase in accuracy rate at making her feel better, which was probably all the caramel peanut stuff would have done, wouldn't have been much difference.

No, what she really wanted, once she stopped wallowing, and she _was_ wallowing despite her earlier stance that it would be fine, but only for the duration of lunch, because she certainly wasn't going to do it when Harry-and-Draco or Ron might see because she _really_ didn't need the hassle, was to stop being irritated about the entire situation. And there was no question of wallowing when they were on duty. Blatt and DeFreese would certainly notice between gossip threads, and bugger everything in the history of ever if she was going to let that happen. It just wasn't worth it.

Maybe nachos would work better.

~*~

"Gr--nger!" The earpiece, a third-generation extension of the concept behind the prototypes the twins had made up years ago, hissed in her ear. "S-- --ttack in --th no-- --ey." Clearly, they were at the outside edge of its range; not everything was getting through, and the blowing roar of it trying to fill in the words was possibly even more maddening than the absence of three-quarters of the content. She yanked it out of her ear and set it on her open palm. It couldn't pick up everything it was supposed to, but it _could_ indicate from which direction it was picking up, and moving in that direction would resolve the problem. It swiveled immediately, the hooked bit that molded around the ear straightening out to point north by northwest before returning to form. She put it back in her ear and tapped the speaking piece to turn it on. "Coming closer," was all she said. They probably wouldn't get the complete report, but it least it would probably indicate she was working on it. She turned the mouthpiece back off, leaving the earpiece alone, and looked around the deserted stand of scraggly woods through which they'd been moving.

"Blatt. DeFreese." She pointed. DeFreese was already fifteen feet northwest of her, so she and Blatt moved up next to him, and they set off, each muttering the phrases that allowed them to move unnaturally quickly. It wasn't flight, and it wasn't Apparating, largely because it allowed more control than the latter when one wasn't sure how far one needed to go, and it was less difficult to conceal from passers-by than the former; fast walking still took place on the ground, after all.

They'd gone something like a mile before the message became clear. She stopped both her teammates and listened for a moment, then nodded. "We need to go," she said briefly. "Wands out."

They certainly knew it was significant from that; hauling out wands in a primarily Muggle area wasn't done lightly, and while they'd come a long way in the last couple of years, the diffusion charms woven into many of the common spells weren't perfect. They both unsheathed their wands, and each took one of her hands, letting her Apparate them as a group.

~*~

For a war that was over, this one certainly kept dragging on. All three of them ducked for cover behind the wreckage of an eviscerated house's smoking side wall as soon as they popped into existence there, and Hermione cautiously peered around the front corner. Yeah, this was going to be a mess. Every house on the street was either on fire, in pieces, or exhibiting signs of magical havoc.

She sighed and sent Blatt around the back. Whatever was going on here, they needed intelligence now, before they could act. Another explosion sounded on the far side of the house across the street, and then another, further west.

"Anyone else on site?" she asked into her headset.

"Not that one," Tonks came back. "Got nothing for you, either. There are three simultaneous situation, and the other two have--bugger. Got to go. No, you're on your own. Muggle neighborhood, and no known targets."

Hermione nodded and indicated she'd report in later, then ran forward to huddle behind a car, leaving DeFreese in place. The first order of business had to be determining the origin of the damage. It _looked_ as though it might be coming from the north, but she wasn't really sure. She cast a generalized locating charm keyed to point toward magic as it was cast, then waited. By the time Blatt came back around the house and up next to her, she'd pinpointed two separate points from which the area was taking fire.

"There, and there," she pointed. "Clever--splitting the offensive splits the defense as well. They're sending splintering spells from that way, and pyrotechnic ones from there. That's why some are burning only, some are splintered, and some are …like that." She pointed at a blue house two down and across, where minute explosions were repeatedly and randomly sparking and muting themselves, leaving tiny smoking holes pitting the side of the house as the alarmed residents looked on, eyes wide with shock. "Apparently they both hit there."

"What the hell are they after?" Blatt asked.

"No idea," she said with a shake of her head. "You think anyone's hiding out in this area? Anyone they'd want? I can't think of anyone."

"Not a clue. Look. Can we fall back while we--"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Fine." They scrambled back to the better cover of the shell of a house. "Given the rate and distance, I make four there and three there," she explained, gesturing. 

"Support on its way? We could evacuate--"

"No. This isn't the only place," Hermione said shortly, cutting off DeFreese. "We'll have to evacuate, yeah, but no support, unless Tonks has time to bring in off-duty officers, which she didn't much sound like she did." 

"Which way, then? Too many to get out quick and come back."

"Plus I'm sure they're watching for that. We take away the Muggles, they know we're on it, and they leave," Hermione explained.

"There is that."

"Fine. You go for the four. I'll get the three. We'll meet back here," she decided.

DeFreese frowned. "Granger! That's--"

"My call. Go on." She wasn't thrilled with the odds, but she'd survived worse, and she did have the advantage of surprise along with the irritating sense that this needed to be handled quickly. She trusted this sense, even as it irritated her to go with what was, in essence, a hunch. She moved along behind the row of homes and around the end, setting up a Disillusionment charm as she went, just in case they hadn't put up a perimeter to take one down, and circled around behind the building she'd identified.

~*~

"Blatt?" Hermione squinted in the smoke that had got progressively worse as the breeze died down. "DeFreese?" It had taken nearly an hour and a half to get there, disable everyone--it turned out there were five there: the three working directly and two in support--and send them to Tonks, and get back. Her back and left knee were sore, but she'd managed it.

Their meeting place was empty, although the attack had stopped entirely. Hermione sat down to wait, then thought better of it and stood back up, walking to the nearest smoldering home and starting the work to reduce the flames and cool the wreckage. Rebuilding and memory modifications were obviously going to be on the list, but not quite yet.

"Granger?" It had only been a few minutes, but Hermione had moved to the next house. She spun. 

"Blatt?"

He stepped into view, left arm hanging awkwardly. "Didn't go very well."

"Damn. DeFreese?"

"He's being seen to. I was sent to bring you, though."

"I need to--"

"I can do that."

"No offense, but you look like you've been dragged through rubbish and set on fire."

"It's superficial. Go on."

Hermione shook her head, for once pleasantly surprised by Blatt's actual calm assumption of duty, and started northwest, settling for a sort of mid-speed walk because she was too damn tired to invoke the speed spell again, and Apparating was entirely out of the question.

When she arrived, she was startled to find three things: first, DeFreese was being worked on by a team from St. Mungo's, as were two others; second, there were at least fifteen former Death Eaters and their ilk immobilized or, in many cases, dead; and third, and it was probably an indication of her exhaustion that this was the third thing she registered though it was the first she saw, there were a pair of dragons perched on the roof.

She stopped and looked about, somewhat at a loss.

"Granger?"

She turned. "What happened here? 

DeFreese sat up. "A lot. There were more than we could see coming in, and we were screwed, but help arrived, is the short version." He waved to his right where the others were being tended. One she didn't know, but one had familiar red hair and was grinning. 

"Hi, Hermione," he said.

"Charlie." She shook her head. "What--"

"Your guys called for help. We were around. Good thing, too; looks like you sent them into something nasty."

Hermione blinked. "Yes, I did. I sent me into something nasty, as well."

"Couldn't have been too bad; you obviously handled it. We came in and saved your bacon on this end, though."

And that, Hermione thought as she nodded stiffly and walked away, was the last bloody straw. Yes, she _had_ handled it, even though it had been a lot to do alone. Yes, she had help up her end, and her men had needed help, and what she was getting for her trouble were these things: a smug, self-righteous Weasley jumping in to 'save her bacon,' and a team that didn't even _let her bloody well know_ when they walked into something they couldn’t take on, and instead went _over her head_ for assistance. They certainly hadn't contacted Charlie and his friend directly. That would have been Tonks.

And they could just go to hell, she decided, seeing to it that everything was under control before she went back to her previous task. So what if there would be Aurors coming to clean up? She was still here, and until they did, this was her responsibility.

~*~

Hermione stared at Tonks, unable to process the sentence. "What?"

"Well. That group you and yours took out with Charlie and Declan's help, that was evidently a last push of some sort. There were other attacks at the same time that looked worse, and we still don't know what the hell they wanted there, but the regular Aurors are on it, and as far as anyone can tell, there's literally no one left. Not anyone anyone can find--if they're still about, they've hidden down deep, and they'll probably stay that way. So, this unit is, for the time being, disbanding."

"So, what--"

"Oh, it's not as though you're being let go. Nothing like that. It's just reorganization. Your men are going back to their home units, as is anyone else who was pulled from elsewhere in the Ministry structure for the unit. I'm taking over as direct second in command within the Auror squad, myself."

"And me?" Her training had been specifically for this job, and she hadn't come from anywhere else. She'd come from the unit of helping Harry win the damned war. She took a moment to wonder whether this same rubbish was happening to him, but then, it wouldn’t matter; he was Harry. She returned her attention to Tonks.

"You, we weren't quite sure what to do with. It's not permanent, but what we were thinking was, until a more suitable position opens, suitable for someone of your training and experience, maybe you could fill in some different places within the Ministry. You know, get to know various departments and whatnot, and--"

"And work as a temp." Hermione didn't think she was excited about this opportunity.

"You could look at it like that, I suppose, but really, okay. Look." Tonks waved her door shut and leaned forward on her desk. "Here's the thing. I know-- _I know_ \--you aren't getting enough credit for your end of, well, anything. Somehow, that you took on five and came out intact while the other four took on fifteen with the help of bloody _dragons_ , isn't being heard, and before that, somehow there are still people who think of you as Harry Potter's bookish friend. No, hold on." 

Hermione bit down to keep from saying what was on her mind; Tonks's words were irritating (but true), but she knew she wasn't just saying all this to piss Hermione off, and she also knew Tonks wasn't among those who discounted her. That was something that apparently was mostly limited to men.

"But the thing is, Hermione, I'm going to keep telling them, and believe it or not, so are the people who worked for and with you. But meanwhile, I just want you to keep your hand in working here, and while you're at it, do some easy work, draw your pay--and I've seen to it your pay won't be the pay of a temp--and get to know people in the various departments you work in. Can't hurt to be connected on a personal level, you know? And can't hurt, when a more appropriate position opens, for you to have broad support."

Hermione still didn't think she was excited, but she also knew Tonks was probably right. "I'll give it a try," she said slowly. "Do I get a choice of where?"

"At the moment there are personnel holes in Herbological Research and the Magical Creatures division. Got a preference?"

"Ugh. Research, then."

"Right. Jemima Welles is out on maternity leave. You'll take her slot, working on Wolfsbane and secondary applications. There's a fair amount of interaction with the Mungo's staff as well as the Potions Guild--it says here she's been working on a theory that there are other uses, besides the obvious, of the stuff. She's left a rather lengthy file of her notes. I'm sure there will be something of interest."

Hermione wasn't sure how interesting it could be; surely they weren't offering her temporary work in anything terribly specialized. Still, she'd read the paperwork and see what she could do. She took the file and stood. "Well, thank you, then." She sounded hollow even to herself, but then, that probably wasn't unreasonable. She had no clear direction and purpose for the first time in a decade, and the lack of true aim was disconcerting.

~*~

As it turned out, Jemima Welles had a reasonably interesting job. Hermione went to work each day with ideas, and had opportunities to meet a number of people, and really, she even made a substantial amount of progress on Ms. Welles's theories. However, that only lasted four weeks, and then the job went back to its owner and Hermione moved on to Law Enforcement. 

Fortunately, that only lasted a week, and between DeFreese and Roger, it was a headache-inducing one.

Her next stop was in Muggle Artifacts, and that was just awkward. Working for Arthur and trying to get anything at all done was a nightmare, and inside of two weeks she was back in Tonks's office asking if she could perhaps find her another slot? Because this one was looking to be long-term, and she didn't think she could stand it; Arthur had hundreds of stories and reminiscences, and while he still somehow managed to get his work done, she couldn’t see how, and besides that, Ron stopped by frequently, apparently to 'kill two birds with one stone' and visit both of them, and that only exacerbated the storytelling, and added an undesired dose of contemplation of Hannah. As much as she did love Ron, that was tiresome quickly. 

Fortunately, the first position she hadn't taken was still available.

So that was how she wound up in the regulations unit of Magical Creatures. There was, as far as she could tell from her thirty-minute orientation: duplication, registration, and rule citation, and not much more.

Well, she could probably bring along a Muggle spiral-bound notebook and work on the next great novel or something in what she expected to be her rather significant free time.

The first day, she found sixteen ways to improve the workflow and make the paperwork and bookkeeping more efficient. 

The second day, she caught up on every piece of correspondence in the office, and nearly all of her own personal correspondence, as well.

The third day, she figured out why Callum O'Rourke, with whom she shared the office, hadn't been best pleased by her activities of the first day; when the department head had gone over the new system, it had been so much easier that he'd immediately found out O'Rourke and Paul Dunby were working a number of illegal angles, from bribes to outright sales of unregistered creatures. A pair of MLE officers were there when she arrived, going through O'Rourke's desk.

Well.

She supposed that did make her stay there likely to be a bit longer, then, with two more unfilled positions.

She didn't, however, expect an immediate promotion and a flurry of owls requesting so many and such various assistance that she wound up hiring her own secretary to cut the uproar down to size. 

And that, though for the life of her she couldn’t quite reconstruct the complete chain of events that led there, was how Hermione Granger found herself, in the spring of 2002, in charge of a thorough department-by-department reorganization and streamlining project within the Ministry of Magic, with an eye also to rooting out and removing security and financial irregularities. Her new unit consisted of only herself and her secretary, but that suited her fine, and Melora was an amiable and competent sort to manage her paperwork.

~*~

"You're looking good."

Hermione stiffened and turned. "Roger. What did you need?"

"I can't simply stop by?"

"You can; however, you never have before, and it's been months. Therefore, I assume there's something you need."

"Cynical of you."

"If you say so." She sat down behind her desk and picked up the stack of forms to be worked through. "Was there anything else? Besides my looking good, I mean."

Roger paused until she looked up. "No. I just stopped by. How's it going, by the way? Are you coming along, working through all the departments?"

"Yes, just on schedule," she said.

"Ah. How long is it to take, then?"

"Well, I'm beginning the second set, of eight, and it's been just under five weeks."

"I see. When do you suppose you might be getting to my--"

Hermione looked up slowly, and Roger trailed off. "So that's what you wanted, then? To know how long you have to tidy up in your own house?"

"I. What? Of course not!"

"Of course not. Well, perhaps we should get it over with, then. I can always switch about…" Hermione shuffled her papers and looked up again, relishing the look of panic on Roger's face for two reasons. First, if he'd been doing anything stupid, it served him right, and second, because she was bluffing. She had no intention of rearranging her schedule. "No, I think I'll stick with the plan," she said.

He blew out and pretended nothing was wrong. "Oh, well, whatever seems best, of course."

She waited until he left, which he seemed only too eager to do after his scare, then added for the benefit of the empty room, "Of course, you're on the schedule for tomorrow anyway."

She stood and went over her timetable once again, then picked up her jacket. She definitely deserved nachos, after that, both for the irritation of the visit and as a reward for having had the good sense not to fight to get him back, all those months ago. She stuck her head in the Floo and found Harry, who said they were more than happy to go for nachos with her.

It didn't hurt that Draco thought Roger was an uptight prig and held no compunction about saying so.

~*~

There was some sense to it, she supposed. Because the first mess she'd uncovered had been in Magical Creatures, an office to which she hadn't been back in some seven months, it was just as well to end it there. In her tour of the Ministry, she'd found nearly a hundred total irregularities--many of them things that had got so bound up in the overall bureaucracy of the place that they were no one's fault, not indications of corruption, but rather, indications of a system in decay. And the twelve individuals whose corrupt behavior she'd uncovered were well gone.

It still amused her, she supposed, that every one of them had been surprised to be caught, even after the first several were incarcerated. 

Men.

Overconfident and overreaching, and on the whole, far too willing to underestimate her, though whether that was a product of her gender, her bloodline, or her unusual entry into civil service, she wasn't sure at all. Even Roger, who'd only been sloppy, not criminal, had managed to be surprised a single day after coming to see her. It was bizarre.

And here she was back in Magical Creatures, starting with Regulation.

"Granger!" Carl Jones was one of only three department heads who had been happy to see her. He hadn't objected to her finding a problem in the first place--had been glad of it, actually, being a decent sort who wanted to run a clean operation--and while he'd told her the previous week he didn't much expect her to find anything like what she'd inadvertently found before, he was still looking forward to seeing what changes she'd recommend.

This was a relief; in most of the departments she'd worked in, the staffs and supervisors had been actively resistant to changing anything at all, and it had been exhausting. But it was nearly over, and then she could take some time off, perhaps. Have a bit of a holiday, work out where to go from here.

Assuming her niggling feeling there was still something going on that tied together several of the earlier problems didn't turn into a new giant problem of its own.

She said her goodbyes to Carl and went off to set up a workspace and start from the top. Melora had already organized a desk and got the interoffice communication straightened out, which was a help; the first three times she'd moved, communication had been a major sticking point, until finally she _had_ rearranged the schedule and seen to Interdepartmental Mail next. Now, it was easier, though she had a sneaking suspicion Hepatia Lamermore had hidden away a stock of MR572 forms and reverted to using them the moment Hermione's attention had moved on. 

She made a note on her list to go check on that. She could always say there had been an anonymous complaint about how confusing it was to still use the old forms too.

But first, Magical Creatures. She'd already been through most of the department, so honestly, all there was to do here was the visits to the outlying branch offices and affiliated organizations and agencies. Probably the dragon preserves and menageries would be easier to deal with than the Potions Guild (wretched snobs, the lot of them) and Gringotts, where efficiency was already the order of the day, but gaining access to Goblin-managed secrets had been rather trying. It wasn't, she'd finally got them to see, that she wanted to see the secrets; just the methods.

As it turned out, she'd had no useful corrections to suggest.

Anyway. These should be easy, comparatively. She'd save the dragon preserve, new to Britain out west, for last. She checked that off as considered, and made a list of British Menageries, to commence first thing Wednesday. Tonight, she was having the weekly supper (lasagna, evidently) with the boys (and Hannah) and trying not to be annoyed that they'd all apparently settled into domestic bliss so tidily. It was really entirely unfair, but as she well knew, neither ice cream nor nachos would help, and Harry made a mean lasagna, so it seemed she might as well enjoy that.

Though she did hope they didn't try to set her up with someone like Rogan Myers again. _That_ had been an unmitigated disaster. She was better off with useless overbearing underestimating men than ineffectual sarcastic domineering ones.

Sort of.

 _Please_ she thought as she finished up for the afternoon and picked up her satchel, _please let them have concluded five is a perfectly lovely number of people for supper._

~*~

Her first impression of the new Westmoor preserve was that it was hot.

Her second impression was that it would have been bloody nice of them to have given her Apparating coordinates that didn't land her in the path of flames. She struggled out of her coat and dropped her wand into her hand in one motion, damping flames and trying to assess whether she was damaged anywhere when a rough blanket went over her head and she was knocked to the ground and rolled about in rather glutinous mud.

Presumably that was to smother her clothing, and it _was_ wise, though some warning and possibly a bit of control over the circumstances would have been a nice thought. Finally, just as she was starting to feel rather thoroughly bruised, the blanket came up and rough fingers pushed her frazzled hair off her face. "Oughtn't jump in front of a dragon, love," said a fairly unrepentant-looking Charlie, who was _sitting on her_ and apparently taking pleasure in her irritation.

Well. That was just about enough of that. She gripped her wand tighter and Apparated backward, landing upright two meters away and glaring. "I'm sure you were told to expect me, and the coordinates were supplied by staff here," she said, irritated by the first impression she must be making, hair loose and blowing and probably tangled beyond repair, clothes muddy, charred and most likely specked with holes.

"Aw, sorry," Charlie said. "Honest. Tommy gave the numbers before he checked with Declan. Dec's got them over here for exercise. He mentioned it, I realized it'd be a problem, and I came out to get you. He didn't do it on purpose. Really. He wouldn't. He's a big bouncy puppy, but not a mean one." He grinned sheepishly, rocking back over his ankles and standing easily. "We'll make it up to you. Well. _They_ will; I think I've probably done enough."

"I'd say." Hermione fervently wished she'd sent Melora on ahead to check out the situation, but she'd volunteered to stay back at the Ministry drafting their finishing-up report.

"Come on," he said, holding out his hand. "We'll get you settled in and cleaned up, and then I'll show you around. With no flames allowed."

She frowned and stepped forward to walk beside him, not taking his hand. He shrugged and jammed it in his pocket. 

"Did you get the memo as to why I'm here, then?"

"Yep. You're reviewing everyone, and it's our turn. We're to give you full access, though I'll tell you now, you shouldn’t be around the beasts on your own. They'll do, uh, what they just did."

"And they won't to you?"

"Sure, but I'm accustomed, and I'll see it coming. Besides. I get scorched, it's my job and it's nothing new." He reached over and tugged at a lock of her hair. "You, well, we don't want you to lose any of that pretty hair, do we?"

He said it easily enough, and Hermione frowned again. It sounded as though he were flirting, and she wasn't about to offer the impression that would be a way to get around the examination she was here to do. "My hair, not that it matters, will be up and out of the way," she informed him crisply. "You needn't worry about that. Although if its length is relevant, I can always cut it while I'm here."

"Up to you," Charlie said casually. "Be a waste, though. Anyway. Tour starts here, then. We mostly set up tents as the herd moves--they don't stray terribly far, but what isn't far for a great beast with forty feet of wingspan is a pain in the arse to walk, so we wind up collapsing and moving a couple times a week. Should be moving today, unless they take it into their heads to come back this way. Just as well I haven't taken mine down yet, though; it takes a bit to set them up."

Hermione stepped into the tent, which as she expected was fully a house, if a small one, on the inside. "Through there, if you want, you can get cleaned up. I'm afraid I got you a bit dirty. Oh. Did you bring something sturdy to wear?"

Hermione looked down at her filthy jeans and simple (but relatively clean) t-shirt. "Besides this sort of thing?"

"Nah, Jeans work, but your shirt's too thin. I've one you can borrow, though."

"I. All right." Hermione went through the indicated door and into the compact bath, where she found a toilet and a shower that didn't even have a separate enclosure, just a curtain and a drain right in the floor. She supposed, given magic, that made sense in confined quarters; she'd never had occasion to stay in a magical tent since the World Cup all those years ago, and this one was rather smaller than that.

She changed quickly and looked in the mirror, sighing at her hair, which was, indeed, not only loose but also frizzy, tangled, standing out in every direction, and a bit matted. She dug her hairbrush out of her re-engorged bag, and set to work on the mess.

When she'd got it in some kind of order, she twisted it and put it up, then hesitantly stripped off her muddy jeans and too-thin shirt to rinse off in the shower. It felt a bit odd to enter someone's home, someone she only marginally knew, and immediately get undressed in the bath before even taking tea, but there wasn't a good reason not to. 

There was a rap at the door. "Decent?"

"No!" How irritating. She was squeaking. "Uh. Just a moment, and I'll be. Um. All right." She pulled the curtain across, then peered around it. Charlie opened the door and tossed a heavier shirt, which landed neatly on top of her bag. 

Hermione waited for him to leave again, then turned on the water.

Then cursed; it probably would have been an excellent idea to remove her knickers before setting water to cascading over her body.

~*~

"So, up this way, it's all rock formations," Charlie explained. "Really, we have an area about five times what we need, but that lets them try to migrate. We steer them. Some. They're kind of independent, though." He grinned and set a hand on her back to help her over a rough patch of loose gravel and shale.

It had been this way all afternoon, once she'd put on his shirt and patted the spray off her impossibly frizzed hair. The man was full of winks and grins and casual touches, and all in all, it was bloody annoying. Nothing about her assignment here required that she be charmed or tended to or _handled_ , and Hermione was beginning to wonder what he was trying to keep her from noticing with all the obvious I'm-so-charming-all-the-girls-love-me friendliness; it wasn't as though she were doing anything to attract this sort of behavior. She pulled her arm away and picked her own way over the rocks. "I understand," she said. She meant, _I understand about being independent,_ , but figured he'd just hear that she understood what he was saying. Either way.

"Now, up here," he went on, apparently completely unaware of her irritation, "this is kind of the central hill around which we steer them. More than one hill, really, but it's more fertile, supports the sheep and goats they eat. Oh. You're not squeamish about that sort of thing, are you?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. For one thing, she could _see_ the hill supported a great herd of sheep, and that it was grassy. For another, she'd been present--intimately, directly present, at the fairly bloody discorporation of Voldemort. "No," she said shortly. "I've seen bloodier."

He frowned. "Where?"

She blinked. He couldn't be so oblivious as to be unaware Voldemort had died, could he? For heaven's sake. "Not really relevant, I don't suppose. In any case, I'll be fine."

He shrugged and waved her ahead of him as they went up over the rise to look out over the rest of the preserve. 

She gritted her teeth and tolerated his closeness as he pointed and grinned and stood far inside the limits of her personal space--it had to be a Weasley trait; Ron was bad about that, too. But with Ron, she was years past it being irritating; he'd been in her personal space before she very much realized she had any, so that was different. "So," she said when he finally stopped talking. "Tell me about the staffing." It wasn't that she didn't need to know about the physical layout of the place, of course, but she probably knew more now than she needed to, and her shoes, transfigured into rugged boots, were beginning to pinch.

"Well. Me, and you met Declan, and then there's Tommy. They're both full dragon handlers, like me. That's its own classification. Our job is not just to handle the beasts, but to diagnose problems, treat them, manage breeding, all that sort of thing. We have helpers, course, because no way we could manage all of them all the time. We'd never sleep. Eight that are basically stable hands, who do a lot of the heavy lifting under our directions, that sort of thing, and then there are the specialists that are here studying stuff. Right now we have a flora specialist doing a study of lily-family life cycles under the …something. Something about dragon sh--excrement."

Hermione stopped and turned. That was the second time he'd bit down on a word he clearly would have ordinarily used, and while she generally didn't much approve of crude language, in this case, it only served to remind her that once again, someone was holding back, taking care of her when she didn't need it, and assuming things about what she would want. "Charlie. I'm not a fragile flower. While I appreciate the concern, I won't actually melt or anything if you say something like that."

"Sorry. Mum'd skin me if I said _that_ in front of a lady and all." He blushed, and Hermione sighed.

"Fine. So, a flora specialist. What about fauna?"

"Two of them, actually. One something to do with small lizards in proximity to the great ones, something about protective coloration changes? And then one studying mammal herd behavior under various conditions. Anyway, all three of them have some basic dragon-management training as well, just so no one on the preserve is totally untrained. Oh, and there's a manager. She handles the books."

"I don't have any training," Hermione observed.

"I. Oh. Well. Only a couple weeks, right?"

"That's the plan, but if your scholars require training, I probably should at least get a manual to read."

Charlie snorted. "A manual? Dragons don't… it's not really a topic one learns from the literature."

"Then practical training it is," Hermione said firmly. She wasn't about to be here without the basics everyone else in the place had, except possibly the manager. 

"Er. Right. We should look into that, then," Charlie said, looking a bit puzzled at her demand.

Fine. Let him be puzzled. "So. Three, eight, three, and one? Sixteen of you?"

"What? Oh. Yeah. When you sum up."

"And do the workloads overlap?"

Charlie scratched his head. "Sure. But that's not a bad thing. I mean, it's more efficient if we have specialties but overlap, you know? So we don't have to go get a particular bloke to do each little thing."

"All men?"

"What?"

Are you all men? I gather Tommy is, and I've met Declan."

"Oh. Well. Manager isn't, and two of the specialists. Hands all are, but--"

"Is that institutional or coincidental?"

"Uh." Charlie grinned maddeningly. "Perhaps you should meet the rest of the staff."

Which probably meant he was putting her off so he could show her some horrid demonstration of the strength required, and she'd see that no woman could manage the job. Typical. She shrugged. "Whatever." 

He reached and took her hand to pull her along. "Come on."

Lovely. She was being manhandled. Again.

~*~

"I'm staying with you?" Hermione frowned. The tents had been moved while they were out, and he led her back to his again.

"We figured it made the most sense. Dec and Tom are, uh. Together. The lily guy is Mary's son, and he's in with her. The hands all stay in the bunktent. And you could stay with the women, but I don't know. They both like to keep all manner of samples. In their kitchen."

Hermione thought about that a moment. Well, it had turned out she'd made some rather faulty assumptions earlier, on which he'd been decent enough not to call her, so perhaps this arrangement wasn't unreasonable. Mary, the camp manager, was anything but delicate. She was, in fact, retired from active duty as a handler, having handed over the reins only two years before. She was also, Hermione noted, probably still entirely capable of cheerfully tying a small cow in a knot without aid of wand or assistant. Furthermore, neither of the female specialists was the one studying flowers, and both of them were studious, serious women who seemed to get on mostly in nods and grunts as they pored over their notes and drew graphs with assorted inks and tools.

Right.

She'd stay with Charlie, as he did have an empty bunk. It wouldn’t be different than staying with Ron and Harry as they looked for Horcruxes, after all. Or, not much.

She nodded and set her satchel at the foot of the bunk that would be hers for the duration, then looked around. "So, you always eat together?" Supper had involved fairly uninspired bean stew and thick bread.

"Mostly. Though I usually take tea on my own, when I'm not in the field."

"Oh?"

"Usually. Not a rule or anything, though as far as I know, Mary never took much to teatime." 

"I see." Hermione sat down on her bunk and took off her boots, groaning slightly and debating whether to turn them back to her comfortable trainers or leave them. She'd need them to be boots again tomorrow, she supposed.

Charlie lifted a brow. "Blistered? Should have said something."

"What? How did you know about my feet? And anyway, it's fine."

"Nope. Blisters'll fester. Feet up. Here you go." He sat down next to her and pulled her feet up to strip off her socks. " _Accio_ ointment." 

It was even worse than being manhandled. It was being manhandled and _liking_ it. The ointment was so soothing, Hermione had to bite her lip not to moan.

Damn it.

~*~

"So, you said before this was the standard arrangement, but I'm wondering: doesn't it automatically limit you, then? If the grazing area is only so big, surely it only supports a certain amount of …what, livestock, I suppose?" They weren't going back up in the hills today, but she'd thought of the question as she pulled on the boots that were more comfortable today, now that her feet were accustomed and that ointment had done its work.

"Well. Yes, though we're nowhere near capacity on that. One advantage of Wizarding over Muggle ranching, which is what this amounts to, is that we can make the grass grow. So we don't have to worry about overgrazing a particular area and having to move them along."

"Right, but you can't make the sheep grow."

"What?"

"You still have a natural limit regarding how many fit in the space and eat, and how many you need to feed your creatures. I mean, if the land will hold 500 sheep as long as you force the grass to grow, you still can't breed a thousand--yes, you dragons will eat that number down, but you can't spend any significant amount of time over the limit…"

"True. Still, we aren't near the limit."

"Yes, I understand that. I was just wondering, if you were, what you'd do. Couldn't you expand outward with another ring of pasture? Outside your ring of rock?"

 

"Could, yes. Never have, mostly because the dragons themselves limit us. If there are too many, we _have_ to start another preserve somewhere; they get to fighting, else."

"Ah."

"Anyway. So I thought first I'd take you up. Might as well get a feel, because the easiest way to control one of the beasts is from its back."

Hermione blinked. "I'm unlikely to find myself in a situation where I have an out of control dragon _and I can climb right on it_." She didn't mention that this was going to involve flying, and that sounded seriously unwonderful. It had been bad enough she'd had to endure a brief broom ride in her stint in Games.

"Still, the best way to get a sense of it." Charlie stopped and looked at her, hands on his hips. "Unless you're afraid of them. I mean, that would be all right. Lots of people--"

"No. I'm not afraid of them." Hermione said, teeth gritted. _It's the flying part,_ she didn't add. They went on, coming around a great boulder to where two enormous green dragons were lying in the sun.

"All right, then," Charlie said. "We'll just go up for a short spin, let you get the feel. Come on." He ambled toward the larger of the two, taking out his wand and walking right along its shoulder to get to its back. "Don't step on the outside of her elbow, but there, on the musculature. Sometimes they startle, but I've got her, here."

Hermione took a deep breath and walked up the side of the dragon, then sat where he indicated, in front of him. 

"You have your wand, right?"

"Of course." 

"Get it out, then. There you go. Now. Like this," he demonstrated and explained the various control charms. 

"Don't you put, I don't know, bridles on them or something?"

"No…" Charlie leaned to the side and looked at her, apparently assessing her expression for evidence she was joking. "Oddly, given they breathe flame, sticking things in and around their mouths goes poorly. No, steer with your wand and your knees, and accept that to an extent they go where they want."

"Right. But you can take them places on purpose…"

"Sure, as long as either they want to go there or we give them a good reason. Like, all right, you remember we had to go fetch a baby from Hagrid, that time?"

"I remember." She looked over her shoulder at him as he explained.

"Right, well. Once we made them understand they were fetching a new-hatched little one, they were willing enough. But for the Tri-wizard tournament, that was different. They had to be brought over in crates because part of the deal was having them a bit cranky."

"Oh. I guess I hadn't considered that. How do you make them understand things?"

Charlie pointed, and Hermione faced forward again, only to find the dragon's head turned nearly all the way about to examine her. Its very big head. Staring. Good lord. "We tell them," he explained.

"They…understand?" Hermione asked weakly. She'd never considered immense lizards particularly clever.

"They have free will, but they're trainable, and they aren't stupid. And yes, they understand quite a lot. They're magical creatures, Hermione. How much of magic is about intent and purpose?"

"A lot."

"Exactly. Now. Clarabelle here--"

" _Clarabelle?_ "

"You don't think it suits? She likes it well enough. Anyway. She's relatively gentle, but you'll want to grip with your knees in any case. Up we go."

She noticed his hands were on her waist, apparently in case she failed to grip. She squeezed her knees tight; she wasn't about to demonstrate fear or any other weakness here.

The upswing of flight was …not at all like that of a broom, which was something, she supposed. It was powerful and fast even though Clarabelle had been practically reclining when they'd begun, and despite her intention to grip and be competent, she couldn't help but lean back against Charlie's chest and sucking in a gasping breath. "Oh!" This was considerably worse than flying on Buckbeak. Dragons were harder to hold onto, bigger, and far too powerful.

"All right, there?" His arms had come around her and pulled her back close, one brawny forearm ridiculously solid against her midsection as the other directed his wand to show the dragon where he wanted her to go.

She pulled forward and nodded, one curt sharp jerk of her head. "Fine."

He didn't let go of her, but she didn't bother objecting. She'd made it clear she was all right, and she wasn't about to admit one way or another about how secure that felt.

When Clarabelle banked left and came around, she even managed not to lean back hard again.

"So, how is it I'm learning about controlling all this, if you're the one doing the flying?"

Charlie set his wand hand down on his own knee, stick resting on her thigh. "Give it a try."

Hermione took a deep breath and directed her own wand, which she was, thankfully, still gripping, in the looping pattern he'd demonstrated, then told Clarabelle to go right.

Clarabelle looked over her shoulder and snorted, then turned right. Approximately two degrees to the right.

Hermione could feel Charlie laughing behind her, feel the hard muscles of his stomach shaking. 

She glared at the dragon's neck and tried again.

It was just as well Charlie hadn't let go; she'd never have managed to hold on against Clarabelle's sudden and startling whip-about.

Charlie retook control and started them in a long slow glide that would eventually bring them down. "I should probably mention," he said casually into her ear, "that I had something of an ulterior motive bringing you up here."

Hermione stiffened. "Oh?"

"What? Oh. Not like that. Uh. It's just, all right, I think our accounting has problems, but I don't know why. Up here, no one but Clara can hear me telling you."

Hermione turned toward him, startled to find his face right there at her shoulder even though of course she knew he was just behind her and holding her against him. "You think Mary--"

"No, actually. I think she's frustrated, too. I think something's going on among the hands, only, we can't just get rid of them--don't have the manpower--and maybe… Shit!"

A blast knocked Clarabelle to one side, where another hit. Hermione gasped as she was thrown forward, all the air forced from her lungs as she hit Clarabelle's neck and Charlie hit her, and then before she had time to think or do _any_ thing, Clarabelle screamed what had to be a challenge, and took off climbing, fast, high and hard.

Hermione pointed her wand at her foot and Charlie's and bound them to the dragon's back, because whether the creature liked a bridle or not, this was serious, and a fall would be disastrous. She couldn’t tell what Clarabelle was chasing, though her sense was that that was what they were doing. It seemed as though Clarabelle had purpose, not the scattered panic of one fleeing. As they approached a low cloud--and this was a problem, since they were getting to be up too high for human lungs to tolerate for long--she saw it. Ahead of them was another dragon and rider, clearly under a Disillusionment charm.

As Clarabelle lunged forward again, she took another hit, and slowed.

Hermione knew as she watched that she was never going to be able to adequately describe this instant.

A millisecond later, it occurred to her she probably wasn't going to get a chance to. Clarabelle's snout was torn open, and while she couldn’t really see the damage, there was no muscle working beneath her thighs now, no movement at all, and they were falling fast.

Right.

This would be a good time for her leadership and creative spellwork, then.

She glanced down, then closed her eyes and swallowed hard. They were far too high for her to try to break their fall from here, and she didn't want to consider the speed at which they'd be traveling by the time… no. What did they have? Wands, so that was good. A dead dragon, evidently. A. …Wait. "Charlie?" Hermione looked over her shoulder. "Is she dead?"

"Almost certainly." They were falling faster, and he had to shout.

"If I stand up and turn around, can you hold me in place? Also, I need your wand."

Charlie blinked. "What?"

"I can't hold you. You hold me. I'm going to fly her wings." It was, as far as she could think in two seconds, the only shot they had of not being crushed into very thin paste very soon. Clarabelle had died with her wings outstretched, so they had the slight advantage of that drag, but… no time to think about it. Hermione unbound her own feet and let Charlie lift her, facing him, a wand in each hand directing the wings to flap as he wrapped both arms around her thighs and looked around her. Slowly, so slowly she wasn't sure she was doing it at all, the wings began to lift. To fly. Badly, but well enough to exert _any_ control of their descent was all she was hoping for.

For a moment, she didn't think it was working at all, but after what felt like much, much too long, their freefall began to become less shuddering, less windy, and she thought, less free. She didn't have the concentration to spare to look. "How'm I doing?" she shouted.

"Considering this is impossible? Pretty all right, I'd say."

Hermione groaned. That was probably the least-helpful answer ever. "I mean--"

"I know what you mean. Just taking a moment to appreciate the creativity. We're still a hundred meters up. And I'd guess twelve miles from the preserve."

"I can't turn us around."

"No, that's reasonable. She would. Would _have_ , I suppose, turned by banking, but this is weird enough without that."

"It's getting harder to fly."

"I know. They stiffen to all but stone damn fast."

"Think we'll make it?" She felt her hands shaking as she brought the great wings up again and let them press against the air.

"Maybe. Which is insane."

"Could you provide more useful direction, please?"

"Yes, we might, and you're down to about fifty meters. If you can possibly bear left, you might ought."

"Why?"

"Clearing. We'll hit the trees in a moment."

"Oh. Right." Hermione concentrated on banking slightly left, and chanced a look down.

And that was when they hit the first of the trees.

~*~

It was odd: all that falling, all the way out of the clouds, had seemed to go faster than was possible, so fast it was hard to imagine she'd had any time to control anything, and now the last hundred feet or so was taking forever. Clarabelle's bulk took off the top of the first tree they plowed into, but that slowed their forward progress greatly, and from there it was all falling. Charlie pulled her down into his lap, still clinging to the dragon's back with his knees, ducking their heads together and curling them in small as they tumbled. Each branch that hit either broke off or snapped back, and Hermione felt the lash of hundreds of the smallest and most flexible of them, cutting through her jeans and shirt and tearing at her hair. And then Clarabelle's body struck a great split stump and cartwheeled off to the right, and Charlie launched them off her. Hermione was startled by the sudden change, but as they landed with a sickening crunch and she tried to look, she realized he'd been right to do it; Clarabelle landed heavily and halfway upside down, twisted, left wing pointing up ten feet to where it had snapped in the landing.

Hermione pushed her hair off her face and sat up, grimacing. "Well. That was…" She trailed off. She didn't think she had anything adequate to describe that anyway. 

"Fuck," Charlie said. "What that was, was completely fucked in every possible way, and mother _fucker_ my leg hurts and whoever killed my dragon is going to die a very slow and painful death that if it's up to me will involve a rusty sword and lemon juice."

Hermione meant to roll her eyes at the over the top comment, but then she found herself chuckling. "And really grainy sand," she said after a moment.

"Hell, yeah." Charlie tried to pull upright, and cursed again, letting himself fall back. "Yeah, okay. We need to do something about my hip."

Hermione realized she was still holding a wand in each hand, and looked from one to the other stupidly. "Uh."

He followed her gaze, then took his from her. It was sparking erratically from the exposed core, the tip broken off entirely and the body of it fractured both vertically and across. "Perfect. Just bloody buggering _perfect_ ," he said. "Yours?"

Hers was split down the length of it, but was, at least, all there. She could probably use it. A little. "Depends what we need it for, I imagine."

"Can you manage enough to hold my hipbone together?" He gestured toward his left hip, which was misshapen and clearly swelling fast.

Hermione grimaced. "Maybe not well. Might be I wind up knocking you out and dragging you away."

"Don't think so."

"What?"

"I said, I don't think so. I'm not about to effectively leave you alone in the forest."

Hermione blinked. "You are _not_ seriously suggesting--"

"Fuck. Just try to fix it. It hurts like a bitch and the longer you wait the more it'll swell."

Hermione pointed her wand, then paused. "Wait. What if it doesn't set right?"

"Then it'll hurt to walk on, but probably work, and I'll get it fixed when there's a healer with a functioning wand available."

"Hips are tricky--"

"Just do it. Fuck. Now would be good."

Hermione nodded and pointed her wand again, then, knowing her wand would never allow a decent bone-setting charm--too much power--murmured a general ordering charm in hopes that would organize everything correctly. The basic bone-knitting charm was next, and just as she finished it, her wand sputtered and puffed smoke as the tip disintegrated in a trail of ash. "Guess that's all of that," she said. "Any help?"

"Some," he said, shifting carefully. "Um. Okay. We need to get away from her." He nodded toward Clarabelle's body, which had gone strangely gray and was, if her eyes weren't deceiving her, shrinking. She looked back at Charlie, eyebrows up, waiting for him to explain. 

"She's about to come apart," he said

" _What?_ "

"Uh. Walk first? Help me up?"

Hermione stood and held out one hand, then both, leaning back hard to drag Charlie upright. He winced, but stood, then tried to take a step and winced more.

"Bugger."

"Not good?"

"It'll do. First, moving." He started hobbling away from Clarabelle as best he could.

Hermione stepped up next to him and supported him on the left side, and they made their way through the trees as best they could. "What did you mean, come apart," she asked, once they'd got out of the immediate area.

"Unless someone sticks a preservation charm on them bloody fast after they die, they turn, like I said, to stone, like cooling lava, and then they …crumble, but explosively. It's good, really; it means a dragon that flies away to die, or dies in an accident like this, no Muggle will stumble across the body. However, it's a pain in the arse if you happen to be…" A hot rush of gritty air and small rubble flew past them. "Standing next to them at the time." He paused and stiffly turned to look back over his shoulder in the general direction from which they'd come. "She was a good girl," he said, shaking his head. "This sucks." He looked around tiredly. "Uh. All right. What now?"

"Do we need to worry about fire?"

"Maybe, but I'm hoping not," Charlie said. "If that's up, we're totally fucked. I can't move fast enough to outrun a big fire."

Hermione looked around and located a fallen tree that stretched across a ditch which probably would be a stream, at another time of year. "Come on," she said. "You need to sit."

"Sorry," Charlie said. 

"For?"

"Taking you on a dragon ride you didn't want to go on, losing control of the dragon, falling out of the sky, breaking myself, and leaving you stuck to tramp about the woods with your hair full of fried dragon remains?"

"Ew. Lovely image, that last," Hermione said, wrinkling her nose.

"Sorry. I get a little--"

"Stop apologizing. Just, sit down."

"Kay." Hermione got Charlie seated--leaning so it wasn't _too_ bad, actually--and tried to work out what to do now. Clearly someone who had access to a dragon, which wasn't exactly common, had been out to hurt them, so it wasn't necessarily true, even if she could hike back to the preserve, that that would be safe. No one expected her anywhere in particular anytime soon, and no one at the preserve had a good reason to know where they were. 

Except if one of them was who had disillusioned the dragon and tried to kill them, but that person had no reason to think they'd survived.

Although if she'd been that person, she'd never have made the assumption they hadn't.

She realized she was standing there with her face in her hands, fingers kneading her hairline. "So, here's what I'm thinking. If they come looking, especially if they look for signs of a fire…"

"Yeah. Fuck. We have to move."

"Right. Which way, then? We can't really go back…"

"Not really, no." Charlie shifted and suppressed another wince.

"Do you know where we are?"

"About. Not exactly."

"Are we anywhere near …anywhere?"

"Maybe five miles? Six? There's a little village down southish of here, but I haven't been to it, just know it's here. All Muggle. Next one beyond that is Wizarding, and not much further, but I doubt I can get that far."

"Anything else?"

"Unless there's a hermit or gamekeeper…"

"Well, fuck," Hermione said. She shook her head at him, then scrubbed her hand over her face. "All right. We have to go, then. She walked slowly around the nearer trees, looking for anything that might make a useable crutch for Charlie, but came up empty. Finally, she did find a downed limb that might work as a sort of cane, and brought that back to him. "We'll be faster if you don't have to lean entirely on me."

Charlie took the stick and stood, grimacing once again, then tried it out. "It'll do."

Hermione's calves and back were well past shaking by the time they came across a rambling house in a rather overgrown garden at the edge of the wood, and if she felt like that, she thought it was almost certain that Charlie was in a _lot_ of pain. He wasn't complaining, but he _was_ sweating profusely and panting, and she was sure a solid four hours of walking, even with periodic breaks, had been too much for him.

They hobbled together around the fence and through the gate to knock at the door. No one answered for a long time, and Hermione was weighing the ethics of breaking in anyway when the door opened. A tiny woman, white hair pulled into a tight knot one top of her head, which nevertheless left her no taller than Hermione's shoulder, peered up at them. "May I help you?"

"Uh. We had a bit of an accident in the forest," Hermione explained. "I don't suppose you could help us get into town? To a hospital?"

"Oh, I don't drive, dear," the little woman explained. "Is your husband badly hurt?"

"Oh! Um." Hermione blinked, but she immediately realized that a couple was less threatening to a stranger than a pair traveling together otherwise, so she let the assumption stand. "He's put his back out rather badly. I thought it would be good if he could see--"

"You're a terrible mess, dears." The woman looked them up and down through immensely thick round glasses. She nodded firmly, and gripped Hermione's free elbow. "You'll stay in Francis's old room, I believe."

Hermione almost pulled away, but Charlie was looking alarmingly white under his freckles, and if nothing else, perhaps this would be somewhere to rest for a bit. The little old woman looked about as undangerous as she could possibly imagine, so she nodded. "We'd be grateful."

"My name is Mrs. Willoughby," said the woman, turning and marching smartly through the hall and into a small dim corridor. Hermione followed, all but dragging Charlie, who was stumbling badly, as they were shown through a room decorated all in purple to the adjoining bath. "You should clean up before tea," Mrs. Willoughby said. "I'm sure Francis and Marian have left some things that you could use." And with that, she turned away, then looked back. "And you are?"

"Oh!" Hermione paused briefly. "I'm Jane. This is Charlie."

"Excellent. I shall see about sandwiches, then."

She closed the door behind her as Hermione got Charlie settled momentarily on the closed toilet. He leaned back, eyes closed, and groaned. "We really should get cleaned up," he said. "If nothing else, we probably have mud, bugs, sap, and ash in a million little cuts."

"Right," Hermione said. She sat down hard on the lip of the tub, unwilling to think too hard just yet about how it was that that they'd come across an elderly lady alone who was immediately willing to just take them.. "Are you at all able to bathe?"

"I'll need help."

"Also, I'm not sure Mrs. Willoughby is all there." 

"Oh, I think she is _quite_ not all there," he said. "Also also, _Jane?_ Can you run water?"

Hermione leaned over and fiddled with the knobs and found the plug. "Right. And it's less readily memorable, you know." She shrugged and turned back to find Charlie was working on pulling his shirt over his head. She stepped forward to take it from him, then frowned. "Um."

Charlie levered himself up and unfastened his jeans. "I really will need help," he said. "I'm not being, I don't know. Coy."

"I didn't think you were. Not that such an effort would work anyway." She knew she was blushing, but he was going frighteningly white again, so she hurriedly helped him tug his jeans down to his thighs so he could sit down heavily again and she could pull them off his legs.

It wasn't anything she'd never seen before, after all. Except the purple and blue bruise covering his entire left side, from the bottom of his ribcage down to his thigh, mottled and swollen, and covering a ridiculously cute tattoo of a stumbling baby dragon on one arsecheek.

She helped him up again and balanced him into the tub and ignored the tattoo, which sent a completely unwelcome flutter into her belly--not only was it a tattoo, which was bad enough, but it was a _cute_ tattoo of a baby creature. On the arse of a man who was, in fact, more muscular than she'd thought, which was usually not so appealing to her but now…well. "Can you manage yourself for a minute? I'll go see what, uh, Francis might have left." 

Charlie leaned back and nodded, and Hermione went to check the wardrobe.

And convince her stomach to stop having the fluttering response she was decidedly not going to have now.

~*~

As it turned out, Mrs. Willoughby had been quite serious about tea. Just about the time they were both marginally dressed (in clothes made for people approximately twice their size, which did make Hermione wonder a bit, due to Mrs. Willoughby's tininess), she came back to lead them out into the overwhelmingly pink-themed sitting room. She'd made tea and sandwiches, with little fruit tarts and biscuits as well. She chattered constantly as they nibbled on their portions, and finally, an hour later, noted it was getting late.

Hermione yawned and helped Charlie back to the purple bed in the purple room, then found some paracetamol behind the mirror in the bath and made him take some before swallowing her own. She collapsed on top of the gaudy covers beside him and clicked off the lamp; it wasn't dark yet, but she doubted she'd have much trouble getting to sleep. Charlie was already out.

Somehow, she thought ass he lay there, they were going to have to get to an actual doctor of some stripe; Charlie was clearly more injured--well, less healed--than she'd hoped, and Mrs. Willoughby didn't seem to realize it. The trouble was, a Muggle doctor would notice the halfway healing, and that might get weird as well.

Damn it.

Charlie groaned in his sleep and she turned toward him. Her own muscles were stiff in the way that was going to be desperately sore in the morning, but she slowly reached up and ran her fingers over his hair. He groaned again and pressed into her hand as it trailed down his cheek, so she pulled back and tried to sleep.

Morning was going to suck.

A lot.

As she fell asleep, she concluded that there probably wouldn’t even be any ice cream to mitigate the pain.

~*~

As expected, waking up hurt. Her back ached from the unaccustomed strain of half-dragging Charlie all over the woods; her skin was sore nearly everywhere from the scrapes and slices of tiny branches and twigs, which though she'd washed carefully, were scabbed and probably not as clean as one could hope, and many of which had bruised as well; and besides all of that, landing on a dead dragon from a mile or so in the air wasn't a recommended maneuver in anyone's book.

The first thing she noticed besides pain was that there was a hand on her breast.

She didn't think he was doing it on purpose, all cuddled up behind her, but her neck was too sore to turn very far, so she couldn’t be sure.

She slowly lifted his hand and squirmed out from under, setting it down on the bed behind her as she stiffly sat up. She carefully turned to look at him as he groaned, his face wrinkled into a frown as he remained asleep. Maybe she shouldn’t have made him move. She stood, biting her lip against a whimper of her own, and shuffled off to get more of that paracetamol, then brought some back for Charlie as well. She set it down on the nightstand, pausing to shake her head at the purple laminate. When Mrs. Willoughby had decorated, there had apparently been no halfway about it.

She sat carefully on the edge of the bed behind Charlie and ran her hand under the waistband of the loose track pants they'd put on him after his bath last night, pushing it down a bit to see what was what. She still didn't have a wand and she still hurt, but she was a strong witch, and she could probably see about doing at least a _little_ wandless healing.

The bruising looked even worse than it had the previous night, though she knew that was a part of the healing process. The rolling little dragon was oddly distended with the swelling, and after a moment, Hermione decided that was where to start. She sat quietly for a moment, considering the energy focus, then started pushing some of the swelling out of the area and helping the ligaments to heal a bit more quickly. It was tiring, and she couldn't keep it up for long, but she hoped that if she did a bit a couple of times a day, maybe in a couple of days he'd be more able to get about. Mrs. Willoughby was a nut, and Hermione didn't wish to impose any longer than they had to.

"Charlie?" she said quietly, looking up. She was startled to find he was watching her.

"Nice way to wake up," he said, voice rasping. "Pretty girl with her hands down my pants, sweating on me."

Hermione blinked, then scowled. "Nice." She moved away. "I was just--"

"Oi. I know. Not stupid, you know. I was just teasing a bit. It's what I do. Thanks."

"Oh. You're welcome." Hermione felt her face heating. Of course he'd been teasing. No one deliberately referred to her as a pretty girl.

"What?" Charlie asked, rolling slightly, then closing his eyes and shaking his head. "Bad idea. Ow."

"Oh! I have more--here." Hermione picked up the pills off the shocking purple nightstand and handed them over.

"Thanks, then. Why did you blush? I wasn't. I mean. Uh."

"Nothing," Hermione said. "You were teasing. I get it. It's fine. Also, nice tattoo."

Charlie grinned. "Thanks. Got it as a joke one night--that one for me and a wolf pup for Bill. Just, you know, to remind him not to take it all so… I don't know."

"You had your halfway-to-werewolf brother get a wolf tattoo?"

"Fleur likes it."

Hermione shook her head. "Boys are all completely and entirely insane, is all there is to that."

"It does feel a little better, though. Were you going to work on it more?"

"After breakfast."

"Fair enough." Charlie glanced about. "She can't possibly bring us food in here. Unless it's grapes. Or aubergines."

Hermione stared in confusion, then found her lips twitching as she realized what his point was. "Blueberries, maybe. They go pretty purple in scones and the like."

"Either way, we should go out, don't you think?"

"Probably." Hermione helped him stand and adjusted his clothes, and they started toward the door.

As she reached for the handle, there was a rap at the door, and there was Mrs. Willoughby, coming to fetch them.

When they sat down at the table, Charlie uncomfortable but slightly more relaxed than the previous evening, their hostess uncovered an immense plate of pancakes.

Blueberry pancakes.

They couldn’t look at each other without snickering.

~*~

"Better?"

It was nearing sunset, and Hermione was working on Charlie for the third time of the day "Yeah. Some. Ow. Fuck. Sorry. I don't mean to--shit! Ouch. What are you… sorry."

"We discussed this. So far I haven't burst into flames, keeled over, or fallen in a heap."

"Well. Actually, you have done all of those things since you got to the preserve; just, not from me cussing."

"Can't you be serious?"

"Can. Usually don't."

"I've noticed. Why is that?"

Charlie shifted a bit more and grimaced, then winked at her. "There's plenty of bad in this world. It's real and sometimes it's nasty, and it's never fun, and it's always way more serious than is healthy. I figure every time I'm not dead serious, I'm balancing that, somehow. Same reason for Bill's ink, really. You know?"

Hermione shook her head. "Not really. But, if it works for you. That's all I can manage for now."

"Thanks. Come up here and lie down."

Hermione moved up to the other side of the bed and leaned back against the headboard. "So, why do you keep apologizing for what you say?"

"My mother taught me to behave decently around pretty girls, believe it or not."

"Not. You were teasing about that earlier, and you still are."

"What?"

"I'm aware I'm an efficient, plain, clever girl. You don't need to go with _pretty_."

"Oh. No, I was teasing about you having your hands down my pants. I meant the pretty girl part."

Hermione cocked an eyebrow and waited for him to laugh.

"Well, I did. Believe it or don't, but I'm not much in the habit of saying things designed to make people feel bad unless they quite deserve it."

Hermione shook her head and looked at the ceiling. "Do you think you'll be able to get out of here in the morning? I have the strangest feeling about staying here. Like we need to move on."

"I'll move when you need me to," Charlie said. "One way or another."

"I'm holding you to it."

"Wouldn't expect you not to. I'm also not in the habit of breaking promises once I make them."

"Good," Hermione said quietly. "Why is she having us stay here and leaving us to the guest room, do you think?"

"Because she's not entirely right in the head?"

"Maybe, but it's odd." She sat for another moment, then got up and went in the bath to get the bottle of pain pills. They weren't much, but they were something, and she was feeling an old need to be ready to move, a sense left over from the work she'd finished nearly a year ago now, and she found herself rummaging in the drawers and packing up a neat little kit of spare clothes and toiletries. She caught Charlie's eye and noticed he was watching her carefully, but he didn't say a word, and she tied the packet shut in a towel and set it on the chair before bringing Charlie his dose.

After supper--well, after Mrs. Willoughby went to bed--they were leaving. Somehow.

~*~

Hermione rolled quietly on the mattress and set her hand on Charlie's sleeping chest. She'd expected him to wake, and sighed when instead he pulled her in close again without offering any evidence he was anything other than fully asleep.

It was really quite insane that he had the capacity to pull her like that, given the shape he was in, but then, she supposed given his more general condition, it wasn't. She'd helped him bathe again before bed--happily, he'd needed a great deal less assistance, this time--and under the bruises and scars, his shoulders and arms were ridiculously muscular and broad. She suspected even at quarter-strength, he could probably wrestle her to the ground in something under five minutes. Not that he'd shown any inclination to do so.

"Charlie?" She kept her voice low, barely whispering as she murmured right against his ear. 

He shifted and winced. "Wha? Her--"

She covered his mouth with her fingers. "Jane," she reminded him, again right in his ear. "We need to go. Quietly."

Charlie was, she was pleased to find, an alert waker, needing little time to yawn and stretch and dither about what to do. He pointed toward the window, and she nodded.

Then he pulled her close against him again. "Anything specific?" He muttered. And then, to her surprised he moaned, rather loudly, against her neck and _bounced_ , causing the bed to squeak. "Shh. Just minimizing suspicion," he breathed.

She blinked, then relaxed. "Right."

It was an absurdly sketchy charade, a bit of bouncing by him, grimacing in the moonlight but not in excruciating pain, and moaning by both of them as she made another pass through the bath and made sure she'd taken everything useful. _If_ Mrs. Willoughby was in fact merely a daft old lady, it wouldn’t matter what she heard. But _if_ the creepy prickling sensation that was telling Hermione to _move_ meant she was somehow involved in the effort to harm them--and Hermione thought she couldn’t be very _directly_ involved, as it would have been easy to poison their pancakes--then this bit of distraction might give them time to get away.

She should have thought of it herself. After all, it was a rather likely reason for someone who looked like Charlie to have become involved with someone like her in the first place.

Finally, they were ready, and Charlie winked lasciviously and grunted, then went silent.

Hermione rolled her eyes, but grinned back, then carefully went to the window and raised the old-fashioned pane enough for them to slip out.

Getting Charlie out was a problem, but they made it.

~*~

"Where are we going?" Charlie asked, as they made their way back into the forest and around.

"Not really sure," Hermione said, "but… I can't explain it but I used to work this way in the field anyway. I just think we needed to go, and back into the wood. I want to go around and loop back, though. I have the idea there's something we need to see."

"You don't strike me as an expert in Divination," Charlie said, hobbling along with his cane, leaning on her a bit.

She snorted. "Not hardly. But, there's a difference between tea-leaves crap and honest to goodness prophecy, and there's a difference between astrological rubbish and attending to feelings that are probably a matter of having picked up on subliminal information."

"Whatever you say, boss," Charlie said.

"Boss?"

"Well. Even if I weren't hopping about on one leg, clearly you're the one with experience in espionage. Or whatever the hell this is. So, you're the boss. I think I'm supposed to be the muscle, but I'm rather failing at that just now." He winked and she smiled hesitantly, then quickly resumed walking, looking straight ahead. It was completely unacceptable that she was now not only finding him physically appealing--muscular shoulders and arses made that not completely unreasonable, even if she generally refrained from acting on any impulse toward that sort of thing--but now between the cute tattoo with the cuter reason, the general deference to her greater expertise, and his easy refusal to panic, appealing emotionally as well. 

She was just going to have to ignore it. "Back through here," she decided. "I think we can come up on the hill--did you notice it? West of the house. We can watch from there."

"All right," Charlie said. "Uh, or maybe you can and I can keep from being in your way."

"What?"

"I'm not going to be much for climbing. And, well. Maybe if I stay down here somewhere, I rest up, gather up enough energy to be of _some_ use wandless, if we need it."

Hermione stopped, considering. She'd been prepared to go back to being annoyed at him for suggesting he should rest, but the thing was, he had a point, and it hadn't been a particularly selfish one. Still, she didn't think they should split up. "No," she said aloud. "We stay together, I'll help you, and then we'll rest once we're up there. I mean, if it's so bad they come after us and find us down here, energy for a single wandless spell probably won't make a difference."

"Okay," Charlie said with a shrug. "But cut me loose if you wind up needing to run. From whatever the hell is going on."

Hermione pursed her lips, but nodded. "If I had to, I would." 

"Have any idea what it is? What's going on?" The ground was sloping up now and getting along in the dark with a cane was distinctly a problem. Hermione slowed down.

"Well, you were saying something when everything went… out of control."

"When everything went straight to hell, you mean."

"Yes, that. Anyway. What were you saying? Something about bringing me up because you had some idea about an accounting problem?"

"Oh! Damn. In all the chaos, I'd completely forgotten."

"Me too," Hermione admitted.

"I think someone's getting into the accounts--before anything ever gets to the real books, because I don't think Mary's involved--and …I don't know what. I've never spent a great deal of time working to understand the criminal mind."

"I have, but what sort of thing are you thinking?"

"Well, all right. Besides Clarabelle--god, that sucks. Anyway. Besides her, we've lost six dragons in the last year."

"All right."

"And recovered nothing. No one's got a preservation charm on any of them."

"And that's odd?"

"Very. Really, the domesticated ones don't go off to die unless they're mentally impaired, you know? Why would they? Food and care and someone to clip their toenails, versus wandering off into nowhere to stop and then go boom."

"Oh. So what should have happened?"

"Well. One, I could see, but six? No way. Each time we've 'found' the ash, and really, there's no way to tell what happened, but …it'd be quick galleons in certain circles; someone who could cast the preservation charm quickly and strip the skin, the claws, the teeth, then take the charm off and let it go…"

Hermione though about this for a moment, slowing as they came up through another dry streambed. "Dragon parts aren't cheap."

"Not at all, no. But, okay, after the second, I started keeping an eye, and I can't nail down anyone being gone at the right time each time or anything like that."

"Maybe it really is coincidence?"

"And someone randomly took up a Disillusioned dragon--do you have any idea how hard that is? Hiding them from Muggle eyes is one thing. But from _mine_? Not easy at all."

"Yours in particular?"

"I certainly can see through the standard one."

"Oh. Right. Well, so have you made any attempt to work out who might have a reason?"

"Besides money?"

"Yes."

"The money is big enough I haven't thought of any good reason that supercedes it."

"There is that. Well, all right, so what if the person had help? Someone with access to Polyjuice, for instance, might make it seem they were two places at once?"

"Like who?"

"Aurors. My old unit. MLE. I mean, it's not a standard field supply, but it's not so hard to get, right?"

"I wouldn’t know, but all right. I suppose that would make it more doable, though I don't think it helps narrow anything down right _now._ Oh. There's the house."

"How's the hip?"

"Sucks, but maybe by tomorrow we can work out a way to get to a real live mediwitch. Or hedge wizard, to be honest. Right now I'd go for, I don't know, a goat-butt talisman against hip pain, if it worked."

Hermione turned and stared. " _Goat-butt?_ "

He shrugged. "If it worked."

"It wouldn't," she said, chuckling at the notion. "I mean, goats aren't exactly--"

"Yes, I know. My point was more along the lines of, I wouldn’t be particular about _how_ it stop hurting. However, until something comes along to make it stop, can't do much but stand it."

"Yes, but obviously, it'd have to be an _ox_ -butt talisman."

Charlie grinned back. "Obviously."

"But seriously. Do you need me to work on it some more?"

"Got work to do," Charlie said. "I'll live. I'm familiar with the value of living, so."

She nodded and found a place for them to sit as comfortably as they could, groaning herself and swallowing another pair of pain pills before handing over the bottle. Charlie took more too and handed it back, and then they set to watching. Hermione was restless, but she knew it was because the sense that things were about to go wrong was making her crazy.

~*~

"Look!" Hermione's shoulder was stiff again as she lifted her arm to point, but she ignored it. "Someone's coming."

Charlie leaned toward her, biting his lip at the uncomfortable shift in position, and squinted. "You know any of them?"

She frowned, trying to see clearly, then shook her head. "Diffusion charm. Really good one. If anything, that lends credence to--crap. Looking this way. Be still."

The three men looked around, sweeping glances, then headed for the little house.

"Think the middle one is one of mine. Michel," Charlie said.

"Really? The blond with the scar?"

"Yeah. Could be wrong, but… well. Wait. They're knocking."

"I thought so. Mrs. Willoughby is in on it."

"Why the hell didn't she just kill us, then?"

"Maybe not actually in on it. Maybe just." Hermione frowned and nibbled her lip. "Maybe I can just--" She put her hands to her ears and concentrated. It wasn't much, as transfigurations went, and it wouldn't stay very long, but it would do. Her ears grew and cupped forward slightly, increasing the range at which she could hear slightly more than double. She turned to Charlie and put her finger across her lips.

"Nice," he whispered. "And yes, shush, I know."

She turned back toward the table, listening intently, trying to ignore the ambient sounds of the wind in the trees. "They're asking after us. I think it _is_ your Michel. French accent, anyway. And. Oh, fuck."

Charlie tipped his head and lifted a brow.

"It's Melora! And DeFreese. But she's not… no, he's calling her 'grandmother' and being entirely solicitous."

"Melora is?"

"My secretary."

"Bugger. And DeFreese is…?"

"One of the men you and Declan helped, back last year?"

"Oh. Wait, he's."

"Shh."

"Sorry."

Hermione leaned forward further. Her ears were shrinking back into place, and she wanted to see if she could get anything else. A moment later, she sat back. "This is bad. He's in MLE, and he's good. Do you have any more sense of where we are, where might be safe…?"

Charlie thought a moment. "Look. Maybe I should just hole up here somewhere, and you should--"

"No." She was still whispering, but her tone was firm.

"Well, whatever's going on, it's pretty deep, don't you think? You need to get somewhere you can tell someone."

"Yes, and that won't involve leaving you behind."

"It'd be the right choice."

"Could you do it? Leave me? If things had worked out the other way?"

"No. Gryffindors should never be in charge of this sort of thing."

Hermione shook her head. "Just as well I'm not stuck here with a Slytherin--if house divisions really mean any such thing."

"There is that. Fine. If you're determined, we should go, unless you expect to learn more."

"I don't think I can do my ears again. Too damn tired."

"Let's go, then. This way, I think." He pointed over his shoulder. "Over the hill and then perhaps around the other side of the village Mrs. Willoughby's house lies outside."

"Wait," Hermione said as he stood. "They're shouting."

 _…not here…--mother…long…which…_ came drifting faintly up, and then there was a shriek, and squabbling between the two men.

Hermione and Charlie looked at each other and turned to move over the hill and out of line of sight of the house. As soon as their pursuers came outside, given DeFreese's training in particular, they could be spotted unless they put some earth between them.

~*~

"Much further, you think?" Charlie was moving slower and slower, though he was doing his best and so far it didn't seem they were being tracked. They'd moved beyond the village itself and headed for the Wizarding town beyond, on the theory they were more likely to even the playing field--filched wands would still help, if nothing else.

Hermione stopped and looked around again. "I'm thinking that's an owl post office," she said, pointing. "We can liberate a few owls and come back to pay later."

"Sounds fair, although don't they put alarms on them?"

"Yes, but…" Hermione pulled a flat metal badge out of her pocket. "Got a bit crushed, but they'll recognize it. They won't refuse."

"Convenient, that."

"Yes. Come on." 

Charlie limped along behind her to the owlery. She selected four owls and took them out with her, settling with them into the garden shed of a house across the square. "If he has any sense, he'll realize I need to communicate," she said. "His grandmother will have been able to tell him we didn't have wands. And Melora certainly knows how I work."

"Maybe they thought we wouldn’t come here."

"Think I'll send for help anyway. Here. You write. I want to see if there's anything useful in here."

"What am I writing? I mean, exactly."

"Uh." Hermione reached up and felt along the shelf. Even a standard Muggle lantern would be a help, but she was actually hoping for a garden wand--it'd be weak and limited, as it was the sort of household wand one gave to a child doing housework. "My name. Your name. Um, in the one to Mary, something she'd know was you, and a general description of the situation. Aha!"

She sat back down, and he handed her the first letter and the blank parchment. "Here."

"What?"

"Duplicate! Except the part that makes it obvious it's me, for whoever you're sending to. Are there any more that are to people that are supposed to recognize me?"

"Yes. Your mother."

"What? Oh god. She'll show up straight away."

"Yes. Would you want to be Michel or Melora or Frank DeFreese--Oh, hello. Frank, Francis… Should have put that together sooner. Anyway. Would you want to be on the other end of your mother's wrath?".

"God, no. All right. So duplicate, and we’ll add--what are you doing?"

"First things first. Making you able to run."

"With that thing?"

"Okay, making you limp somewhat less."

"You're going to exhaust yourself."

"I'm all right. How's that."

"Fuck."

"Bad?"

"No. Good. I hadn't really realized how much--"

"Ah. All right. Now for the letters so we can get the birds on their way."

~*~

"Now what?"

"Now, we wait."

"Here?"

"Yes. So far I don't have any nagging sense we're about to be screwed."

"Oh?" Charlie turned toward her and grinned; she could see his teeth in the dim light of the weak little wand. 

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Not like that."

"Can't blame a bloke for trying."

"Honestly. Five minutes from death and dismemberment, and as soon as you catch your breath, you wake up your balls and take them for a ride." She scooted away the few inches allowed by the small space of the shed.

"Honestly, I was _teasing_ , Hermione. I wasn't suggesting you crawl up here and straddle me. Not that I have an objection in principle, but now isn't hardly the time. I was just joking." He scooted close to her again. "Really, we ought to see about catching a nap, don't you think?"

"Are you volunteering to take the watch first?"

"Sure. Here." He took the wand and pulled her close against his shoulder. "You sleep. I'll watch. I'll wake you in two hours or if someone comes, whichever is first. Oh." He pointed the wand at her and cast a rough and only marginally effective muscle-healing charm at her. "Come on. Sleep."

She had to admit, it made sense.

She also had to admit, his shoulder was ridiculously comfortable, now that she wasn't quite so damn sore.

\--

"Hermione."

"Hmm?" She felt warm and secure and didn't very much want to open her eyes, but she did, looking up into Charlie's face. "Oh!" She started to jump back, but he held her firmly against him, which she thought fuzzily she probably ought to find objectionable, but somehow she didn't.

"You don't have to move; I just said I'd wake you in two hours, and it's been."

"I can't believe I let you stay awake first. You're injured."

"Yes, but you've been taking care of me for two days, so it only stands to reason you'd be wiped out, too. Here." He handed her the wand, which was once again gleaming, producing just enough to light to see by.

She took the wand and went to move away again, but he grinned. "Nah, stay. You're comfortable."

"How can you be comfortable with me leaning on you? Oughtn't it be the other way about?"

"You just are. Plus, you smell good."

She arched a brow, but his grin didn't falter. "I'll fall back asleep," she argued.

"Okay, that _would_ be a problem, I suppose, although at this point, if they come upon us with just this wand and whatever we can manage wandless, we're pretty well fucked anyway. Pardon my language."

"We're back to that?"

"Sorry. We're pretty well tied up, buggered over a counter, and used repeatedly. With no apologies for language. Better?"

Hermione gaped at him, then grinned and nodded, ignoring the flare of heat in her belly at a discussion of being tied up and bent over a counter coming out of Charlie's mouth.

"What?"

"What what?"

"You have a funny look on your face."

"Like you can see my face much."

"Well yes, it's dim, but I'm also about two inches away."

"It's nothing." She squirmed slightly before she could stop it, and bit her lip.

"But see, you _are_ uncomfortable when I talk like that, aren't you?"

"Not. It's not. It's nothing." Hermione shook her head and pulled away, and he let her. "Come on. You lean on me now, and get some sleep."

"But seriously. Which is it, because you don't like if I apologize and tell me you won't break, but then--"

Hermione sighed. "I just found it… I really don't want to talk about this."

"Hopelessly crude? See, my mother would be appalled."

"I don't want to talk about your mother while I'm envisioning-- damn it."

Charlie was the one to arch a brow, then. "Oh? Me discussing repeated fucking bent over, say, a work bench, hands held in place… that makes you envision things?"

Hermione closed her eyes. "This is _so_ not the place for a conversation about bondage and orgasms," she said, her cheeks burning as she tried to regain some semblance of control over the situation.

Charlie laughed. "True. Though I just want to take one second to point out there _is_ a work bench on this shed. Not very big, but then, I imagine it'd serve."

"Stop it! Damn. Boys!"

"What, you never think about sex as a means of dealing with stress?"

"No! That's not what I meant. It's not like that. I mean, sex isn't a means of releasing stress!"

Charlie blinked, then shook his head. "Not always, no. But it certainly can be."

"Not for me."

"Then begging your pardon, but whoever you've been fucking? Is doing it wrong."

"I haven't been, I mean. Recently. I mean. Not that this is in any way your business."

"I suppose a demonstration is out of the question?"

" _What?_ "

"A demonstration of the relaxing properties of a proper orgasm."

Hermione gaped again, now outraged as much as she was aroused, which she was never ever going to admit. "I have no intention of lying back so you can get off and relax," she finally managed.

Charlie shook his head. "Not what I meant. For one thing, I'm pretty sure my hip, which is much better but not really healed, isn't up for either you lying back or me bending you over that workbench anyway. I was merely going to offer _you_ a demonstration."

"I. What?"

Charlie paused. "I suppose I'll just be plain about it. I'm offering to give you head and do it right," he said finally.

Hermione found she had exactly no idea what to do with that suggestion. She blinked, and tried to re-parse the sentence into something that seemed rational. Nothing changed. She blinked again. "What would be in it for you?" She shook her head. "Uh. Not that I'm in any way considering such an offer; I'm merely curious as to what would be the motivation."

"Besides me getting to slide my tongue into your cunt? How is that not its own reward?"

"I. All right, this conversation is completely ridiculous. Go to sleep." The sensation in her stomach was getting completely out of hand, and Hermione was pretty sure she needed to put an end to this. Except, the pleasant flush pushing its way through her body was making it difficult to be particularly firm about it. No, this was inappropriate. She opened her mouth to say so, but he interrupted.

"We could always stop, if you don't like it. Not that that's at all possible."

She was too taken aback by the certainty there to go forward with ending the conversation. "Cocky, are we?"

"No, just certain of my interest in making you come. Motivation always makes for an alert student."

"You want to study my… body?"

"Oh, yes, I do."

"Why?"

Charlie shook his head. "Long list, but to begin, you're smart as hell, which always gets me hard in a pretty girl."

"So this is about you getting hard. And I _know_ that last bit is pure top-grade dung."

"Nope. As I said, I doubt I could do anything with that at the moment anyway. To go on, though, it's not like I haven't known that first part about you for quite a long time, but more recently I've concluded I'd quite like to taste the mole beneath your left ear."

Hermione put her hand up involuntarily; he clearly hadn't just noticed it here in the dim; her left side was away from him and even if it weren't here hair was in the way.

"And I thought, during that first bath, that I wished I had the energy--and permission, but that's not really part of fantasizing, now, is it?--to reach and lift your breast, which would be perfect in my hand, and then run that hand down your stomach to your hip, down soft skin that probably tastes as good as you smell when you lie curled against me."

Hermione was too irritated to note she was holding her breath. Or too breathless to note she was irritable. One or the other.

"So. That's why, in short, though it really all comes back to the first part which was not, as I have told you before, utter or even partial shite."

"And you think this is a good place to act on it?" She was losing ground here and knew it, and also couldn’t quite believe it. Maybe she was still asleep.

"Not for everything I want to do, now. However, it's where we are, and is therefore a perfectly good place to start."

"Everything you want to do?" Damn. She shouldn’t have asked that. She was only encouraging him. Although, if she was still asleep, she supposed that was all right.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "For instance, I'd like to spend a couple of hours licking every inch of you until you're quivering all over before I make you come."

"You know, none of this is leading to you sleeping."

"I know. Want me to stop? Or should I tell you about how I'd like to slide my cock into you and hold there, nibbling on your ear and throat and telling you to fuck yourself on me, wrap your legs around my back and rock up hard and wet and open? Should I tell you how I'd like to spend a lazy afternoon sucking your inner thighs, leaving marks to remind you, all the while smelling you getting wetter and explaining, between bites what I was going to do next?"

She should put a stop to this. She knew it. She wasn't asleep and couldn’t pretend she was. But… no one ever talked to her like this, and certainly no one ever wanted to suck love-bites on her thighs and put her orgasms at the top of the list. Roger certainly hadn't; with him sex had been all right, but too often he'd come too soon, leaving her frustrated, and before that, well. Ron's tit obsession had been a bit overwhelming, and sex between them had been hurried every time, shoved between Horcruxes and lunch as it had been. She swallowed and tried to ignore the quiver that had become an outright ache between her hipbones. "Charlie, this is ridiculous. You can't have come to all these conclusions about what you want to do with _me_ in the four days we've been working together, so this has to be all stuff you just generally--"

"Fuck that. I'm a fairly quick decider, you know. I knew what I wanted to do the first time I met a dragon, and I've never changed my mind. Besides, even if that were true, which it isn't, it wouldn’t negate what I'm saying here. And the offer's still good, by the way. If you don't believe the words, maybe I can convince you otherwise."

Hermione shook her head. At least she'd be wide awake while she was on watch. Frustrated, but awake. "Go to sleep, Charlie."

He shook his head. "One of these days, you know." Without warning, he leaned further over and brushed his lips over her, a gentle brush followed by a quiet tug on her lower lip with both of his as his big right hand pushed into her hair behind her ear, thumb brushing over that mole. "I'm good with my hands, and good with my mouth, love."

And with that, he let his hand slide down her throat to her breastbone, then lifted it so he could turn and lie down, head on her thigh.

Good lord.

She sat quiet and tried not to squirm, and hoped it wasn't completely plain how tempted she was.

~*~

"Charlie."

His two hours had passed, and to Hermione's irritation, her knickers were wet and her belly was still pulsing.

He turned his face up a bit. "Hi. What time is it?"

"Nearly five."

"Given any more thought to sex as a relaxation technique?" He winked at her as he sat up, and she scowled. 

"You, Charlie Weasley, are a horrible, horrible man."

"Oh, I know. But persistent. Bet you supper."

"What?"

"Once we're all rescued and healed up, I bet you supper I can demonstrate to your satisfaction that a really earth-shaking orgasm makes for a good relaxation technique."

"…Are you asking me on a date? A post. post-fuck, I suppose, date?"

"Yes and no. Date, absolutely. However, the fucking would wait until after supper, I suppose. Oh." A distant explosion broke through the sounds of birds twittering in the dawn. "What do you suppose--"

Hermione put the wand up and muttered a charm, but this wand wasn't up to the task. "Damn." She stood and went to the door of the little shed, peering out through the crack. "An explosion, obviously, but I'm not sure why."

"You think the owls--"

"I imagine so, but the question is, who's here. You ready to move?"

"More or less." He stood and adjusted his jeans. "Damn, it's nice to stand on both feet. What?" He followed her gaze as she looked away from where he'd just done adjusting. "I told you you made me hard."

"Yes, but I thought--"

"You, lady, need to learn to trust Charlie."

"I do trust Ch--you!"

"Physically, like when you were flying the dragon, yes. By the way, that might have been the most brilliant piece of work I've seen in the last, oh, ever. But as far as trusting what I say about you, you don't."

"Well! You say insane things."

"Nope. Though since you do trust me physically, I'm definitely following up on that bet. Come on." He reached for the handle of the door, brushing against her.

"Which way, you think?"

"Straight for that explosion, I reckon," Charlie said. "Also, meanwhile," He ducked his head down and kissed her again before she could move. "Just to keep you understanding I mean it." He opened the door and stepped out into the gray dawn light, walking stiffly and still using the crutch, but moving a great deal more quickly and comfortably than he had been before.

Hermione followed a step behind and allowed herself the luxury of watching his arse for a moment. It was only fair after thinking about sex for two hours and then getting two seconds of totally inadequate kissing.

~*~

"Granger!"

Hermione looked toward the call and sighed with relief. "Tonks."

"Sorry it took a while," Tonks said. "Had to verify. We've got them cornered, though. DeFreese, the Frenchman, the secretary, and three others who were evidently looking for you. Glad to see you in one piece--I thought you might not be able to hold out."

"We hunkered down," Hermione said. "Charlie needs a healer, though, and I need about four hundred hours of sleep, but it can wait."

"No," Tonks said. "Blatt's here and pissed off. And Harry came along--he was at Molly's apparently? He convinced Molly to stay there and make up a place for the two of you, since that's as good a place to rest as any."

"Harry's here?" Hermione shook her head. "Then DeFreese is screwed. I should have sent him his own owl, of course."

"I'd have sent for him if he'd not come to me first. Retired, yes. Still competent at heroism and more than happy to risk his arse for his friends? That, too."

Hermione smiled. "I imagine."

"Oh!" Tonks said. She put a hand to her ear. "They've got them in custody. Look, Hermione, I know you're going to want to help with this, but I think you should be seen to first. We can hold them a few days."

Hermione started to object, to say she could help deal with them now.

And then she looked at Charlie.

Who, the wretch, mouthed, "we have a bet."

Fuck it. The slimeballs could wait. She nodded at Tonks, who picked up a broken-off corner of brick and pointed her wand at it. " _Portus_. It'll take you to Mungo's," she said. "Go on. I'll owl when we need you."

Hermione reached for the brick, then stayed her hand to wait for Charlie. As soon as he reached too, they were both whirling in the air and landing at the hospital.

She told the admitting nurse to let Molly Weasley know, and went off for her exam.

~*~

The mothering she'd received at the hands of Molly wasn't a surprise, but it was excruciating never the less. The only thing making it bearable was that Charlie was enduring the same in the next room over and was just as annoyed by it. 

Hermione rearranged the pillows again, restless now that the tension of the last several days was off, and listened through the wall to where Molly was lecturing the poor man on having allowed himself to be in so much danger, and having allowed Hermione to be endangered as well, and before she knew it, she was up and out the door. "Molly."

Molly turned and stopped, mid-sentence. "What did you need, dear?"

"For you to stop haranguing Charlie as to my endangerment, which was actually my business, not his."

Molly blinked. "Why, I--"

"I know. You worry, and you were worried about me, and Charlie's older than me so presumably responsible, and I love you for that, but it was my job that put the pressure on, not his, and either way, I'm fairly good with a hex, you know."

Molly nodded and looked back at Charlie. "Still. Mid-air. There's no way that was your idea, Hermione, and don't you tell me otherwise. I've heard Ron and Harry comment on that far too many times."

"You're afraid of flying? Hermione, I _asked_ about that." Charlie was frowning at her from behind his mother, though the effect was rather ruined by the fact he was wearing nothing but a pair of long flannel pyjama bottoms and had healing bruises and a long pink scar where they'd had to get in and manipulate the badly-healing bone directly.

"No, actually, you challenged me about being afraid of dragons. Which I'm not."

"I cannot fucking believe you landed Clarabelle while--sorry, Mum. I cannot believe you landed Clarabelle while afraid to fly."

Hermione bit her lip at the glare and restatement. It was funny, now that it wasn't directed at her. "No good choices, were there?"

"No, but _fuck_. Sorry, Mum. No, wait, actually, if there was ever an event over which the only appropriate level of admiration includes that word, that was it. Not sorry."

"You weren't going to let me fall," Hermione said quietly. "I didn't doubt that."

Molly looked back and forth between them. "I think the two of you need to finish discussing this," she said with a light odd tone behind her words.

Hermione frowned, wondering what had brought that on, but said nothing as Molly brushed past. Charlie stepped toward her and peered around the doorframe to watch her go down the stairs. "She's a little scary about these sorts of things."

"What sorts of things."

"Knowing when we, um. Have things going on such as what you and I have going on. Or sort of have going on. Or… something."

Hermione flushed and wasn't sure what to say to that, so she ignored it. "How's the hip?" she asked instead.

"Up for anything you want of it," Charlie answered with a grin.

"Oh?"

"But we have a bet to settle first."

" _Here?_ " She was pretty sure that hadn't been part of the deal.

"Not a chance." Charlie found a shirt, then tossed her a pair of track pants to pull on under her short night-dress.

"What are we doing?"

"Flying away," he said. "Can't be worse than a dragon, and I still won't let you fall. Unless you'd rather go downstairs and Floo."

Hermione bit her lip. Flying, or going down past knowing Molly? "Flying," she agreed. 

Charlie nodded. "Good. All the sooner for the holding to commence."

Hermione shook her head, but put on the track pants while he left a note for his mother: _Gone out, safe and sound, back this evening. --Charlie and Hermione._

~*~

"Nice place you have here," Charlie said as they landed at her flat and walked up the stairs.

"Um. I think it's kind of a mess inside, actually. I didn't really plan on company--"

"I'm hardly company, love."

"Well. Mostly you are. I. Charlie, I feel a little weird bringing you here to, um."

"Lick you?"

"Something like that. I mean." She paused and unlocked her door, then closed it behind them, taking as long as wasn't obviously strange to do so while she told her stomach to behave itself. "Would you like some tea? Or biscuits and milk?"

Charlie stepped closer and leaned down. "Nope. I'm good."

"I--"

"And you're nervous, so let's make some tea."

Hermione turned and started toward the kitchen. "You don't have to do this, you know. I mean, you were in pain, and I was there, and--" She turned and was startled to find him walking right behind her. "Oh!"

"What?"

"You're following me. Into the kitchen."

"I noticed that, yes." 

"Why?"

"I believe I said, let's make tea. There's an 'us' in there."

"Oh." Hermione felt her face warming into what she expected was an embarrassingly pink blush. "Okay." She filled the kettle and set it on the stovetop, then started to step back to organize tea leaves.

"Hi," Charlie said as she bumped into his chest before she'd even manage to turn. He set his hands at her waist, not particularly holding her there, but steadying her, then reached up and pulled her hair across the back of her neck, baring her left ear.

"What--"

"Told you. Tasting that mole. I was in pain, not drugged and insensible." He bent his neck and touched his tongue behind her ear. "Mmm."

"Thought we were making tea."

"We are. However, a watched kettle won't boil, so I'm helping by not watching it." He licked again, a long wet stroke up the side of her neck, closing his lips around her earlobe and humming _mmm_ against her skin.

"Oh," she said weakly, tilting her head to the right to give him better access. His hands were wandering, across her belly and up her chest, as he suckled at her ear and hummed, and all at once she realized they were moving, rocking slightly back and forth. "You're rocking me."

"Planning to rock your world," he murmured, "but yes, I'm a mobile sort of bloke." He tugged at the hem of her nightshirt so he could push one hand up under, and groaned. "See, I _knew_ this would feel nice."

She had to agree, it did, and with a deep breath, turned in his arms, letting her breasts press against his chest, putting her arms around his neck as she dipped her face to one side to kiss him back.

"Nice," he said again.

"Should I turn off the kettle?" she whispered.

"Think possibly," He reached around her and turned off the flame, then started backward out of the kitchen, both hands under her shirt and up her back, pulling her with him back to the sitting room where in one smooth move he pulled the nightshirt over her head.

She felt herself blushing again and looked up at him, hoping he wasn't too bored and preparing to point out again he didn't have to do this. And then she saw the look in his eyes: hungry and definitely interested and all but drooling, not at her breasts exactly, but at _her_. He looked up to see her looking at him, and winked. "So much better than tea."

And with that, he grinned, and she grinned back, and he pulled her to the floor, pushing her to lie down and propping himself over her. "Give a shout if I do something you hate," he said as he brought his lips down to one breast, kissing his way around the nipple until she was sure she might actually die from the nipple's desire for attention. She brought her hand up to her other breast without even realizing she had, and let one finger drag across, back and forth, then stopped, startled at herself, and reached for Charlie's shoulder. 

He looked up, touched his tongue to her desperate nipple, and shook his head. "Told you. All about you." When he took her nipple into his mouth and sucked, she couldn’t help it; she arched her back and rocked her hips and damn it, that was wanton and probably slutty and he was going to think--

"Fuck," he growled. "Do that again."

"What? Act like a--"

"Woman who I'm making hot? Do you have any idea how much I like that?"

She shook her head.

"A lot. A whole lot." He went back to kissing, now moving down her belly, stopping to play with her navel for a moment before moving further down, kissing his way over her--his, actually--track pants until he was lying on the floor between her legs, mouth open against her crotch, breathing and nibbling and nuzzling until she writhed and begged and heard herself asking for _more_ and _please_ and _now_ , blushing furiously, rocking _more_ furiously, and pushing her hand under her knickers to shove everything off. 

Charlie looked up and caught her wrist. "Worthwhile yet?"

She groaned and tried again to get rid of the rest of her clothing, but he shook his head. "My job," he scolded.

She relaxed her hand, letting it fall to the polished wood of the floor, though as soon as it did, she was scrabbling at that. "Please?"

He raised up on his knees and dragged down the track pants and her knickers impatiently, then hit the floor again. 

"Don't you want--?"

"Oh, I want. But I keep telling you. All about you." He pushed her legs up and settled between them, then turned his head to nibble sharply at her inner thigh. 

It was all she could do not to scream in frustration as he didn't touch her where she most wanted, didn't touch, didn't touch, didn't touch for what had to be _hours_ , and yet still was _right there_ and tightening the knot of tension in her belly harder and harder with every nip and suck and lick at her legs, her arse cheeks, anywhere and everywhere but there. She whined and rocked up and tried again to slide her hand between her legs, but he caught her wrist again and shook his head, eyebrows waggling, and then without any kind of warning at all, he ducked down and plunged his tongue inside her, nose pressing and moving against her clit, tongue doing wicked and wonderful things inside her, fingers pushing their way into her too. He looked up, eyes just visible as she looked down, and winked-- _winked_ , playful and fun and _having_ fun making her feel like this--and that was entirely too sexy for her to do anything but drop her head back and feel muscles she couldn't name tighten and pulse and throb. "Charlie?"

He didn't answer, just kept sliding his tongue back and forth, perfect and impossibly right, and she was shuddering, shaking everywhere as every muscle clenched, back sweaty against the slick floor as everything released at once and she came, knowing she was saying something, completely unable to work out what it was, pulled halfway upright by muscles in her stomach tightening and releasing and making her shake. He stayed where he was, kissing gently, until she stilled, then scooted back and picked up one foot, rubbing away the tension where her toes had curled too tight. He did the same for the other, then crawled up and lay on his side next to her. "Comment?"

"Oh, god," she managed.

"Relaxed?" She opened her eyes, intending to glare, but he just picked up her (very relaxed) hand and kissed her knuckles. "Because if you're not, I'm more than happy to try again."

"Oh, god."

He didn't answer, instead standing and picking her up, kicking open the door to her bedroom and laying her down on the bed, then crawling in with her. "Good for falling asleep, don't you think?"

"What about you?" She could feel him rock-hard against her thigh and nudged, eliciting a groan. "Don’t you want--"

"Absolutely. But, as I plan to turn you to putty again once you rest, it'll keep."

She shook her head. "I don't think so."

"No?" Charlie blinked, then swallowed. "Not so good, then? All right. Where I am taking you to supper, then?"

Hermione laughed. "Here, I think." She picked up her spare wand off the nightstand and Vanished his clothes, then slid down under the covers.

"Fuck!" was all he managed before he was thrusting into her mouth and groaning..

She pushed up the covers and lifted her mouth away from him. "Don't you dare say sorry."

"Yes, ma'am."

~*~

"Charlie?"

"Hmm?"

"It's half eleven."

"Mmm-hmm?"

"Your mum will be wondering… you did say back this evening. Plus Harry will be back and wanting to know what happened."

Charlie rolled toward her and smirked. "Harry can wait. Half eleven? We've got 29 minutes, then. Bet I can think of a use for them."

Hermione shook her head. "If I get any more relaxed, I might actually melt. Besides, I owe you supper."

"And I plan to collect. Tomorrow good?"

"Better now than it was earlier. Though, I probably should go in and file a report."

Charlie waggled his eyebrows. "I hear you need a new secretary."

"What?"

"Well. A desk sounds like a fun place to work. You over."

"You're impossible."

"I've been told. Certain pretty witch thinks I think with my dick and don't mean what I say."

"You may not come to my office and distract me tomorrow."

"Damn. What about the next day?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Perhaps."

"Excellent. What are you doing once this is all wound up?"

"No idea, actually. This was the last of the cleanup, as far as I know, and I have no plans."

Charlie grinned. "I have an opening at the preserve…"

Hermione blinked. "But--"

"But you're afraid to fly. We can work on that. And I'll always catch you anyway. Or you could be a researcher, like the others."

Hermione lay back down on her pillow. "Maybe I could."

"You'll think about it?"

She smiled. "Only if you come help me wash my back. We have to get home, and I'm taking a shower first."

Charlie nodded and threw back the covers. "Your wish, milady, is my command."

Hermione considered that as they went toward the bath. "In that case, you're in charge of locating nachos."


End file.
